Book Beginnings on Friday

First Lines

Published on May 20, 2011 by Margaret6 Comments

Currently I’m reading The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann, but I’m getting increasingly tired of it. It maybe very well written, chronicling (in detail) the tension and despair in Olivia Curtis’s life as she has an affair with a married man in the 1930s, and no doubt it captures the spirit of the times of the interwar years but I just want to shake her. I’m probably in the wrong frame of mind to read it right now with its stream of consciousness style of writing and the small font that is blurring in front of my eyes as I read.

So this morning instead of struggling on with it I opened Once a Biker by Peter Turnbull, a Hennessey and Yellich mystery and began reading. It was a relief – the font size is much bigger, the writing is straightforward and the action is quick-moving.

I’ll write more about both books when I’ve finished them, but for now here are the opening lines of Once a Biker:

Monday, 17th June, 09.05 hours – 23.42 hours in which a realization comes to a dying man.

She had found the hospice had a wholly unexpected air of happiness about it. The peace of the institution she could understand, and indeed expected, as with the atmosphere of resignation, but the happiness of those awaiting death was something that came as a surprise. (page 1)

and of The Weather in the Streets:

Turning over in bed, she was aware of a summons: Rouse yourself. Float up, up from the submerging element … But it’s still night, surely … She opened one eye. Everything was in darkness; a dun glimmer mourned in the crack between the curtains. Fog stung faintly in nose, eyelids. So what was it: the fog had come down again: it might be morning. But I hadn’t been called yet. What was it woke me? Listen: yes the telephone, ringing downstairs in Etty’s sitting room; ringing goodness knows how long, nobody to answer it. (page 1)

Both books invite me to carry on reading. They are very different genres, but I’m keener to find out who killed Terry North, whose body has been found buried in a wood, twenty years after he disappeared, than I am to find out how Olivia’s affair progresses. I suspect it’s doomed.

A Book Beginnings post hosted by Katy at A Few More Pages.

Published on August 27, 2010 by Margaret8 Comments

Book Beginnings on Friday is a meme hosted by Becky at Page Turners. Anyone can participate; just share the opening sentence of your current read, making sure that you include the title and author so others know what you’re reading. If you like, share with everyone why you do, or do not, like the sentence.

My opening sentence this week is from The Art of Drowning by Frances Fyfield:

Someone wants to kill me.

Nice and short and dramatic, leading me to wonder who is writing, who wants to kill him/her.

Book Beginnings on Friday

Published on August 20, 2010 by Margaret4 Comments

I’m just about to start reading 4.50 From Paddington by Agatha Christie. The first sentence is:

Mrs McGillicuddy panted along the platform in the wake of the porter carrying her suitcase.

I like this sentence because it paints a picture and I know immediately that Mrs McGillicuddy is not a young or a fit woman, as she’s out of breath, or she’s running late for the train. The next few sentences pad out the picture of a woman who is short and stout, carrying a large quantity of parcels as a result of Christmas shopping. So I also know that it is most likely to be December and as she has been shopping she is most likely to be going home and she’s probably tired out.

As this is an Agatha Christie book I know there’ll be a murder and I also know from the blurb that she is about to witness the murder on a passing train through the train window. Now I just need to get reading.